Pianist Jan Luley has fashioned an album in Blues Gumbo: Down in Pianorleans with a lasting sense of place – of second-line parties, and swampy regret, and spicy passions – despite having studied piano not in the Big Easy but in Holland. No matter. Listen as Luley reanimates the classic stoicism of Jelly Roll Morton’s old-time rumination “Buddy Bolden Blues,”Read More

Boy, is it ever. From the setting to the instrument to the very label it’s appearing on, John Medeski’s aptly named forthcoming album speaks to a different time — a time long, long before his more recent genre-melting experiments

It’s almost like a rite of passage for every jazz pianist worth his salt to make a Bill Evans tribute record. Her salt, too. Pamela Hines was more than ready for her own thesis on this greatly influential figure of both jazz and piano

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onuXr2PwHEU&w=500&h=305] I always had a complicated relationship with Billy Joel’s love songs. As worldly wise and street tough as his albums, in particular early on, could no doubt be, something seemed to go wrong when he tried to talk about girls.

To hear the music of Sumi Tonooka as she plays on Now: Live at the Howland is to hear music stripped bare. The album presents two solo sets recorded on March 22, 2010 at the Howland Center in Beacon, New York.

Toronto-based pianist Chris Donnelly has made two records so far, and both of them are solo piano records (Solo (2009) and Metamorphosis (2011). We now finally get to hear how this inventive musician interact with other musicians with the first album by Myriad3, a trio he recently formed with fellow Ontarians Dan Fortin (bass) and Ernesto Cervini (drums).